Wednesday 10.29

Chapel HillDruid Theater CompanyMemorial Hall, UNC Campus—To followers of the theater scene of the past decade, the Druid Theater Company of Galway, Ireland, has a particular claim to fame: It was the company that discovered a precocious 23-year-old nobody named Martin McDonagh, and subsequently premiered his celebrated first trilogy of The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Skull in Connemara and The Lonesome West. But the Druid Theater, under the leadership of Garry Hynes, has been making waves far beyond the Western coast of Ireland for three decades now. The Druids are on tour in North America with their Hynes-directed productions of two short plays by the great John Millington Synge (an influence on McDonagh, whether he acknowledges it or not): The Shadow of the Glen and Playboy of the Western World. Performances are tonight and tomorrow; visit www.carolinaperformingarts.org and www.druidtheatre.com for more information. —David Fellerath